Dharun Ravi, Old Bridge beating verdicts show risk of applying bias law

The confusion is understandable, and not just for Indian-Americans: Dharun Ravi, one of their own, was prosecuted for committing a hate crime when he violated the privacy of his gay roommate. Meanwhile, the gang of teens accused of attacking an Indian family in Old Bridge and beating the father to death are not.

How could this be, local Indian leaders asked Star-Ledger columnist Mark DiIonno — wasn’t the point of this law to protect minorities from violence?

There’s a simple way to answer that. Prosecutors must decide whether the victim was selected out of bias. They must judge intentions. And while forensic evidence can lead to objective conclusions about who fired a gun, where the bullet struck and what gun fired the bullet, judging human intentions is inherently more subjective.

Our view is that tougher penalties for bias crimes are justified because those crimes present a greater threat to society. Remember, too, that criminal prosecutions often rely on judgment of intentions. That is what is separates murder from manslaughter, for example.

But cases such as Ravi’s illustrate the dangers of invoking the bias law, especially in situations that carry such political heat. The evidence that he violated Tyler Clementi’s privacy by using a webcam to spy on him was undeniable. The evidence that he acted out of bias was not. And yet Ravi faces the possibility of up to 10 years in prison, based on that presumed bias.

Scrawling a swastika on a synagogue or hanging a noose from a tree is a barefaced attempt to instill fear in an entire community, and deserves a heftier charge than trespassing or damaging private property. That’s why we have a bias law.

But in the Old Bridge case, for instance, there was no evidence of bias. The defendants, according to police, tried to attack someone of a different race before they came upon their Indian-American victim. It appears that they targeted their victims randomly.

Prosecutors were right not to press bias charges in that case without sufficient proof. But they were wrong on Ravi.

If they don’t apply our bias law more sparingly, someday, they may not have it at their disposal. The public will lose all faith that it can be applied fairly and consistently.